Jemima Pierre, Black Alliance for Peace, January 12th 2022
My name is Jemima Pierre, I am the Haiti/Americas Coordinator for the Black Alliance for Peace. I too am honored to join my colleague, Margaret Kimberley, and this international solidarity group in support of the Nicaraguan people’s continuous struggle for self-determination.
I am also speaking as a person born and raised in Haiti, a country impacted by the more than 218 years of continuing U.S., Canadian, and European aggression.
Over the years, we have seen Haiti used as the testing ground for western imperial maneuvers. In the past decade, in particular, the US government, along with the Organization of American States have tried to destroy Haiti’s nascent revolutionary movement that emerged after the Duvalier dictatorship. In the process, they have staged political and electoral coups in Haiti, installing one unpopular puppet after another.
So we Haitians know clearly about the hypocrisy of the U.S and EU governments in attempting to denounce Nicaragua’s democratic processes. We only need to point to what the US and OAS have done, successfully, in Haiti, and that is: destroy its democracy and undermine its struggle for self-determination. We cannot let this happen in the rest of the region.
For BAP, Haiti is the real and symbolic ground in which resistance is being waged once again to liberate the territory from foreign control and to serve as a strategic space for supporting the still unfulfilled anti-colonial struggle of the Caribbean and the broader Americas region.
Black, Brown, and colonized peoples in the Americas have been consistent victims of the United States and the west, of efforts to undermine socialist democracies, to thwart off any progressive efforts, and to suppress the will of the masses of the people. This is true from Colombia to Haiti, Honduras to Brazil, Cuba to Venezuela, Grenada to Nicaragua.
We, the Black Alliance for Peace, are African revolutionaries committed to a People(s)-Centered Human Rights (PCHRs), that center self-determination, social justice and socialism. Our support for Nicaragua and other countries fighting to maintain sovereignty, is not only an issue of solidarity but also one of common struggle.
This is why we salute the people of Nicaragua! And we see the rousing victory of the Sandinista revolution as a model and hope. It is a revolution that we promise to continue to defend.
All power to the Nicaraguan people! Long live the Revolution!